It prepares the muscles for activity.By warming up, ie work in the muscle gently, you got the blood flowing at an increased rate to the skeletal muscles and decreased rate at the Gastro-Intestinal tract, you catch your first wind, which activates your lungs to increase their capacity, and you 'unstiffen' your muscles by removing any attenuative messengers already present in the muscles

It prepares the muscles for activity.By warming up, ie work in the muscle gently, you got the blood flowing at an increased rate to the skeletal muscles and decreased rate at the Gastro-Intestinal tract, you catch your first wind, which activates your lungs to increase their capacity, and you 'unstiffen' your muscles by removing any attenuative messengers already present in the muscles

Wow !!..Thank ewe very much Nizzle. So warming up is very important. I do what some people would call a "power walk" on the treadmill..I average about 6 miles and I always find that as soon as I hit the 40 minute mark the workout gets a lot lot easier....do ewe think this is because my body has reached optimum efficiency for the exercise I am doing ?

Is there any actual evidence (as oposed to a whole buch of folklore) that says we have to "warm up" before exercise.

I have a vague recollection that the US military did some experiments and found it didn't help.

Also I think that evolution would have wiped out the need to warm up.

"I'm sorry Mr Sabre-Tooth, but I can't run away just yet- I need to warm up first"

I'm playing indoor soccer, and i really notice a difference when I arrive just in time and don't have time to warm up before the match, but that might just be me.

And the evolutionary argument is void: In those times that we still needed to run from sabre-tooths, humans were in a constant state of 'warmed up' due to their daily activities.Nowadays, man is more sedentary (those with office jobs etc) and not in a constant state of being warmed up anymore.